Beyond Reality discussion

How did your year shape up in terms of books? (Yeah, let’s ignore how the year was in other aspects, at least for now.)

My 2020 reading goal was to read 80 books. I certainly met and exceeded that goal by reading 104 books (although Goodreads thinks I read more than that—maybe some were short stories or novellas)! My average rating on a 10 point scale was 8.06.

13 books earned a rating of 10 (the same number as last year!): Fool’s Quest and Assassin’s Fate, both by Robin Hobb, The Dread Wyrm and The Fall of Dragons, both by Miles Cameron, Finity’s End, Regenesis, The Pride of Chanur, Chanur’s Homecoming, and Chanur’s Legacy, all by C.J. Cherryh, Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Night School by Lee Child, Katherine by Anya Seton, Binti: Home by Nnedi Okorafor, and Songmaster by Orson Scott Card.

Another 28 books earned a rating of 9 or 9.5.

My lowest ranking this year was a 5, earned by 3 books: The Renegade Dragon and The Hidden Dragon, both by Irene Radford, and Mutant 59: The Plastic-Eaters by Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis. 

Fantasy, science fiction, and mysteries/thrillers are my favorite genres and comprised most of my reading in 2020, as they do most every year.

My goal for 2021 is 90 books. I hope to travel more in 2021, which usually means lots of reading in airports and on airplanes, but very little reading during the actual vacation. After this past year, if I miss my 2021 goal because of travel, I promise I won’t be complaining!

My 2020 goal was 42 books and Goodreads says I hit 62 (although a couple of those were kids books I read behind my oldest to check for content... wow are there a lot of good kids books out nowadays!). My own tracking says I read 20,595 new-to-me pages, which is a really good year. I really struggled with reading for fun shortly after waves at everything hit but got it back on track this summer.

My average rating was 3.9 stars and I had 13 five star books this year, both of which are unusually high for me. Four of those were re-reads; two for IRL book club (Watchmen and The Bear and the Nightingale) and two with my oldest kiddo (Shadow Castle and The Phantom Tollbooth). The remaining nine were:
Identity Crisis,
Hillbilly Elegy,
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck:,
Every Tool's a Hammer: Life Is What You Make It (seriously, every Maker should read this one, probably my favorite for the year),
Dawnshard,
The Aeronaut's Windlass,
Victory of Eagles,
A Deadly Education, and
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.

I had a bit of a spree with Jim Butcher and Naomi Novik books this year, much to my delight. I'll be continuing that in 2021.

I also read a more-than-normal amount of non-fiction this year. My two lowest rated books for 2020 were in that category (The F*ck It Diet: Eating Should Be Easy and 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos).

For 2021, my goal is 50 books, with the sub-goal of clearing anything that's been on my shelves more than a year (which is 4 books but they're all pretty dense non-fiction).

My goal was 100, and my final total was 116 - but like most of you, that included some audiobooks, graphic novels, and other things that didn't really take significant "reading time."

My average rating was 4.3, but that's probably skewed because I don't do star ratings on Goodreads for 1 or 2 star books - if I didn't rate something, you can safely assume that I don't recommend it. :)

I did have a lot of five stars this year, though - almost 1/3 of what I read!:
Swipe Right for Murder
The Outsider
The Starless Sea
Britt-Marie Was Here
The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups
Unfamiliar Fishes
Two Boys Kissing
Ophelia
Half of a Yellow Sun
Just One Day
Mobituaries: Great Lives Worth Reliving
The Diviners
The Long Earth
The Power of One
Joyland
Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers Who Helped Win World War II
What Christians Believe
The Swans of Fifth Avenue
The Hobbit, or There and Back Again
The Calculating Stars
The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories
The Fifth Season
Violent Delights: An Alma Jaramillo Mystery
The Theft of Joy: An Alma Jaramillo Mystery
The Fire Next Time
A Wild and Precious Life
Bear Town
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
The Bone Clocks
I've Seen the Future and I'm Not Going: The Art Scene and Downtown New York in the 1980s
Once More Upon a Time
Coming Out Party
Assaulted Caramel
Silverswift

As you can see, I'm all over the place with genres, since so much of what I read is for my various book clubs.

I am no longer making predictions or assumptions about anything in life, but I do plan to continue with all of my current book clubs, so perhaps 2021 will be similar in terms of number and variety of books.

I don't set reading goals, but between reading more due to pandemic and the fact that my kids are old enough that they can go entertain themselves while I read, I read 87 books this year - my highest number since I started keeping track in 2009! A bunch of those were middle grade books with my son, so shorter, but still - I'm quite happy with my number!

Favorites from the year, which I'll split into fiction and nonfiction:
Fiction (SF/F unless otherwise noted):
Assassin's Fate
The Starless Sea
The Calculating Stars
The Hate U Give (YA realistic fiction)
The Broken Earth Trilogy: The Fifth Season / The Obelisk Gate / The Stone Sky
The City We Became
Piranesi
Opium and Absinthe (historical fiction)
The Doors of Eden
The Searcher (mystery)
A Memory Called Empire
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

Nonfiction:
As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride
Becoming
Caesar's Last Breath: Decoding the Secrets of the Air Around Us
We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom
Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption
The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women

I hope I can keep up this pace - I read a LOT of really great books this year!

Megan wrote: "My goal was 100, and my final total was 116 - but like most of you, that included some audiobooks, graphic novels, and other things that didn't really take significant "reading time."

My average ..."
The Long Earth has been on my TBR pile for a while; I’ve even nominated it here in hopes it would win and give me a push to read it. Might have to move it up the list...

Shel wrote: "I don't set reading goals, but between reading more due to pandemic and the fact that my kids are old enough that they can go entertain themselves while I read, I read 87 books this year - my highe..."

Just Mercy was such a heartbreaking, necessary read. I've recommended it over and over to friends.

If you have any middle grade recommendations, I'm all ears. We're firmly into that territory here, too.

Lindsey wrote: "If you have any middle grade recommendations, I'm all ears. We're firmly into that territory here, too."

Have you read the Wings of Fire series by Tui Sutherland? My son read them three times over the summer! I enjoyed them more than I thought I would!

Lindsey wrote: "Just Mercy was such a heartbreaking, necessary read. I've recommended it over and over to friends.."

I have not read the book, but the movie was powerful!

Shel wrote: "Lindsey wrote: "If you have any middle grade recommendations, I'm all ears. We're firmly into that territory here, too."

Have you read the Wings of Fire series by Tui Sutherland? My son read them ..."

My son is in the middle of this series right now! After a bit of a slow start, he is also enjoying them. They're not among the ones I checked out, so maybe I should add them to my list!

No goals, just enjoying listening to audiobooks at the rhythm that works with the rest of my life (mostly while commuting, cycling or doing other menial stuff). In 2020 I completed 25 audiobooks I can happily recommend:

The Broken Earth Trilogy: The Fifth Season / The Obelisk Gate / The Stone Sky by N.K. Jemisin (The Fifth Season, The Obelisk Gate and The Stone Sky.

The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss.

The Mistborn trilogy The Final Empire, The Well of Ascension, The Hero of Ages by Brandon Sanderson.

Books 1-13 in The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher: Storm Front,
Fool Moon, Grave Peril, Summer Knight, Death Masks, Blood Rites, Dead Beat, Proven Guilty, White Night, Small Favor, Turn Coat, Changes and Ghost Story.

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller.

Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky.

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo.

Tamir, i also adored the broken earth series this year in audiobook. It was done well.

If you liked Children of Time, Children of Ruin is also excellent. And I feel the audiobook version enhances some certain scenes and make them all the more delectable. :D

Wow you all had some awesome reading experiences this year!!

My goal was 50 and halfway through the year I thought I was screeed eventually I made it to 53 for the year.

Some of my favorites:
(Sorry I am on the app so I can’t do links)

SHOREFALL
CHAOS VECTOR
THE SEARCHER
CHILDREN OF RUIN
The Nickel Boys

SEMIOSIS/INTERFERENCE

Random wrote: "Tamir, i also adored the broken earth series this year in audiobook. It was done well.

If you liked Children of Time, Children of Ruin is also excellent. And I feel the audiobook version enhances ..."

Thanks for the recommendation, I'm definitely going to give Children of Ruin a go soon (probably my next monthly credit purchase). I LOVED Children of Time on so many levels.

And yes, I had a lot of expectations for The Broken Earth with all the prizes the author has won for it (and me liking SFF stories with political messages), and it didn't disappoint.

MadProfessah wrote: "Sorry I am on the app so I can’t do links”

No worries! I copied and pasted mine from another source and chose to not go back and add all the links.

Talk about an uneven year.

Total read: 33
34 if you count my reread of This Alien Shore. I can't remember if i did any other rereads this year. I never bother keeping track of those.

Most were 4 star reads, so at least what I had read was enjoyable.

Piranesi was my only 5 star this year and it so very much deserved that 5 stars. I consider it an exceptional story.

Nothing was lower than 3 stars, so no real stinkers, but I would say The Bear and the Nightingale was the worst of the year. I have a very strong dislike (understatement here!) of fairy tale tropes. They make me just wanna grind my teeth and scream at people. And maybe beat them to a squishy pulp with a baseball bat.

It doesn't help that my husband chose my week of vacation to do a marathon watch of One Upon a Time, which means I've been going around the house with headphones on almost 24/7 trying to ignore it as much as possible.

Interference wins the award for the WTF story of the year. I'm not even entirely sure it deserves it, but events near the end kind of made all the hairs stand up on the back of my neck and gave me a very uneasy feeling.

Like those optical illusions where if you look at it in one way and its a lovely young woman, but if you look at it another way, the same thing is an old crone. Is the old crone on purpose, or am I reading more into happenings than was intended?

For biggest surprise, Bird Box
I have an odd relationship with horror and it can be some hit and a lot of miss for me. I had purchased the book a few months prior and just opened it quickly on a Sunday afternoon to make sure I had all of the tags sorted out. The next thing I knew it was 3am and I had to get up for work in a few hours. :)

For Best Character: Gideon!

No goals for next year as usual. What happens, happens. What I read, I read. What I don't read, I don't read.

Here's to at least one pleasant surprise!

I met my reading goal. I planned to read 24 and read 28.
My top five favorites of 2020 were:
Rhythm of War by Brandon Sanderson (Stormlight Archive Book 4)
The Last Emperox by John Scalzi (The Collapsing Empire Book 3)
Network Effect by Martha Wells (The Murderbot Diaries Book 5)
The Trouble with Peace by Joe Abercrombie (Age of Madness Book 2)
Tiamat's Wrath by James S.A. Corey (The Expanse Book 8)